Just For Show
by Hanna Squalor
Summary: Norrington gets married after DMC. It's told through the eyes of his new wife who remains unnamed through the entire thing.


Just For Show

I have always known I was just for show. My parents only kept me because they could afford to. They kept me for show. No one needs a girl, and parents don't need to love her. My nurse and waiting maid Natalie was a mother to me. No matter she was just a servant; she nursed me and taught me everything I know today. At parties she would dress me up and hand me too to my own mother. I would cry and scream, my mother would pinch me until I stopped and put up the good show for the company. I only came out to be shown off.

It wasn't as if I was ever particularly pretty. My mother has always said, I'm not a great beauty, but I'm the most congenial girl she's ever met. When I reached fourteen I had to start spending less time with Nat. Nat had been with me since living in England, she had helped me move to the Caribbean and now when I came closer to my season, she was pushed aside. Suddenly she was no longer good to be with. Now she drew my baths and laced my corsets. When all my time was spent on my appearance and making acquaintance with all the best people in Port Royal she always had to watch from afar. My love for her stays in my heart, though as I turned sixteen a most interesting thing happened. I received a proposal of marriage.

Commodore James Norrington's hand writing came to my door asking for my hand in marriage. My parent's only hope was to get Brant Miles to propose. He was wealthiest man they could get for a short girl like me. My mother said I was too chubby to ever marry to someone with a title. She was wrong. James Norrington had picked me. All the pretty blonde girls that fawned over him had been pushed aside for me.

I realize why now. Everyone in town had known of his affection for Elizabeth Turner. Now that she was married she was out of reach. There was a dark period where he had disappeared. Gossip had said he lost his commission. When he came back he attended a few parties in which he spoke to several women I was one of them. At the time I had been thrilled. James had taken an interest in me. I had thought. Looking back I see that the other girls were always giggling and chattering. They hung off him even if he was trying to speak with his gentlemen friends. I was a way of having a respectable marriage, but I wouldn't get in his way. I was just for show.

Being the good wife would be an easy job for me, I thought. But then they told me the hardest part. Natalie was getting too old. She was let go with some extra money for all her years of good service. I was forced to say goodbye to her. It was like being parted from my mother. I write to her every week but it's still not the same. She has moved back to England with her money. Now she's a nun, living the rest of her life in quiet happiness taking care of orphans that remind her of me. I was the child she never had.

Most men, when looking for a wife go for the bargain of prettiest or the most money. Everyman goes for one over the other. The majority can stand an ugly wife for the extra money. My family has the good blood and the good money, but never quite enough. Not like the other families who live in splendor we always had a little less by comparison. I was once told my one of my school mates that I was cute, but not pretty and wealthy but not rich. It was the truest thing I've ever heard in my life. I often wonder if my husband thinks I'm pretty.

At first he completely ignored me. I was nothing but a wife. I shared a bed with him and I sat next to him at parties. I made polite conversation. But I was just for show. We spend evenings together in the library. He looks at me over the top of his book now. I always catch it from the corner of my eye. While I work at my needle point he likes to watch me. He pretends to read, even when I ask him nothing he shrugs me off and tells me to be quiet in a playful voice, hiding his smile behind his book. Still no romance I was just for show.

I remember the day he started to treat me affectionately. It was one of our nights in the library. I was stitching away at the ship I was sewing onto his handkerchief, when I looked up to see if he was watching me. I smiled at him when I saw his eyes, then clumsily pricked my finger with the needle. I gave a small gasp at the pain watching the blood bubble up from under the surface of my skin. I looked around for a hanky in my pocket but I couldn't find one. Before I could place my finger in my mouth, he stood and came over with his handkerchief, and wiped away the blood. He simply smiled at me and said _"What am I going to do with you?" _I will always remember that night. The night I stopped being for show.

That night I became a private show. A show just for him, every night he watches me and everyday I pretend not to notice. Now when I sleep he pulls me over to him mutter things like _"My clumsy wife." _I smile in the darkness because I have found someone who treats me like a person not a painting. I have gone from a museum to a private collection and now I hand in a library where only one person appreciates me. He's the finest art connoisseur I've ever met.


End file.
